Snicket named the Baudelaires after French macabre poet Charles Baudelaire.[1] The French surname Baudelaire (/ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ in English), historically also recorded as Badelaire and Bazelaire,[2] refers to a short sword or knife used as a heraldicblazon: Thomas Nugent, in his Pocket-Dictionary of the French and English Languages (1808), translated baudelaire as a "short, broad, and curved sword" used in heraldry;[3]Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, in his Encyclopædia of Antiquities (1825), described the baudelaire as a "little portative knife" used as a medieval English blazon;[4]W. T. Cosgrave described it as a "short and broad backsword, being towards the point like a Turkish scymitar."[5] The French word baudelaire comes from Medieval Latinbādelārius, bādelāris, or bādārellus,[2][6] meaning a "kind of short sword" (ensis brevis species).[2]

Despite the apparently Romantic origin of "Baudelaire," Snicket stated in February 2007 that "the Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it," citing their "manner" as an indicator.[7] Snicket elaborated: "I think there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery. […] I'm Jewish so, by default, the characters I create are Jewish, I think."[7]

The Baudelaires were a wealthy family that lived in the Baudelaire Mansion. The Mansion has several secret tunnels leading in and out of the building, including one that could be accessed from the apartment of Jerome Squalor and Esmé Squalor. The Mansion was burned in an arson fire, which also killed Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire. The Baudelaire orphans believe that Count Olaf set the fire to claim the Baudelaire fortune, which the children were to inherit when Violet came of age. However, Olaf implies that he is not responsible. In the film adaptation, Olaf is the arsonist.

Bertrand Baudelaire is the father of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, the husband of Beatrice, and a V.F.D. member. Throughout the series, the children remember anecdotes about their father, such as him cooking at a dinner party. He was a childhood friend of Beatrice and a good friend of Dewey Denouement.[8] As a member of the V.F.D., Bertrand helped train the V.F.D. lions.[9]Count Olaf implicates that Bertrand and Beatrice murdered Olaf's parents. At the outset of the series, Bertrand died in the fire that destroyed the Baudelaire Mansion.

Violet Baudelaire is Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire's oldest child and is the older sister of Klaus and Sunny. She is an intelligent and skilled inventor, and she helps herself, her siblings and her dearest friends out of dangerous situations by creating devices from simple, commonplace objects. For most of the series, she is fourteen years old. While she is inventing she has a ribbon to tie up her hair to concentrate, this resource has helped them much throughout the series. As the oldest of the Baudelaire orphans, she is the natural leader that has promised her beloved parents that she will look after her siblings. She invented an ironing torch, bungee rope, big speaker, and has made many, many more inventions like a lock pick that saved all of their lives from serious danger.

Klaus Baudelaire is Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire's second child and only son. He is also the brother of Violet and Sunny. He is an excellent reader and a brilliant researcher. He is identified by his prominent glasses. Although he and Sunny did not initially enjoy each other's company, by the time Sunny was six weeks old, they became inseparable. At the beginning of the series, he is twelve years old.

Sunny Baudelaire is Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire's youngest child. She is fond of biting things with her four razor sharp teeth. She eventually develops an interest in cooking in book nine "The Carnivorous Carnival," which often eclipses her biting in later novels. Although she is still an infant and her speech is unintelligible, she develops better speaking as the series goes on. She demonstrates advanced problem solving skills, motor dexterity, comprehension, moral reasoning, and intelligence. One of her first real words is "Brilliant" describing Uncle Montgomery Montgomery's level of intelligence. She is very small for an infant.

Beatrice Baudelaire II is the daughter of Kit Snicket,[10] who dies after giving birth. The infant Beatrice is adopted by the Baudelaire orphans, hence the use of the surname Baudelaire. At age one, "she looks very much like her mother," according to Chapter Fourteen. The younger Beatrice was named for the Baudelaire's mother Beatrice, at Kit's request and in keeping with the tradition of naming children after deceased friends. In the Beatrice Letters, which is set ten years after the main series, she is the second Beatrice Baudelaire. She is searching for her uncle Lemony Snicket and for the Baudelaire orphans, who have apparently disappeared.[11] She stalks her uncle and writes him six letters. However, he constantly refuses to see her and actively runs from her. She writes that she attends a "secretarial school that isn't really a secretarial school", implying that she has found a V.F.D. training school. Her sixth letter is signed "Beatrice Baudelaire, Baticeer Extraordinaire."

Dr. Montgomery Montgomery or "Uncle Monty"(Introducing and killed in): "The Reptile Room") is Bertrand Baudelaire's cousin's brother-in-law and Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire's second guardian, but he prefers to be called Uncle Monty. He appears solely in The Reptile Room. It is thought that his name is inspired by Monty Python, as he is a herpetologist (one who studies snakes) whose first name is Monty.

Uncle Monty is a "fat, short, chubby man with a round red face." He discovered the Incredibly Deadly Viper (which is in fact not deadly at all). When the Baudelaires first meet him, he gives them homemade coconut cream cake, and the Baudelaires instantly warm to him. He plans to take them to Peru with his assistant Gustav, but receives Gustav's apparent letter of resignation the day before (it is later revealed that Gustav was actually killed by Count Olaf), so Uncle Monty hires "Stephano" (Count Olaf in disguise) in his place. The Baudelaires quickly recognize Stephano as Olaf. Uncle Monty, on the other hand, thinks that Stephano is a jealous spy from the herpetology society, there to steal the Incredibly Deadly Viper, which he has not yet revealed to the society. When the Baudelaires tried to tell Uncle Monty Stephano's true identity, he misunderstood them, thinking that they were saying that Stephano's "plan to steal the Incredibly Deadly Viper" was as despicable as Olaf, rather than Stephano actually being Olaf. Then, he tore up Stephano's ticket. This does not stop Olaf, who murders Uncle Monty (using snake venom). Olaf then blames it on the Mamba Du Mal (the Incredibly Deadly Viper in the movie), another snake owned by Uncle Monty. The Baudelaires escape Olaf, but they never again find a nicer or more caring guardian than Uncle Monty. Uncle Monty also had some connection to the Quagmire family because there is a tunnel connecting the two houses.

In the film, Klaus sees Uncle Monty with a spyglass similar to the one he found in his father's desk drawer, and later finds one that belongs to Aunt Josephine. Klaus also found a picture with his parents, Aunt Josephine, Uncle Monty, and other presumably VFD members, all holding spyglasses. He is older and one of the more sympathetic characters in the movie. He gives the children a wonderful home, but faces the same fate as the other sympathetic guardians. In the book, Monty dearly wishes to have a family, but never found the right woman; in the movie Monty had a wife and children, but they were killed by yet another arson attack (possibly by Count Olaf).

On the book cover Monty's hair is red and in the movie it is grey. But in the video game his hair is black.

In the book "Who could that be at this hour?", Monty is mentioned by Hector in the final chapter.

In the film adaption, Montgomery Montgomery is played by Billy Connolly. In the 2017 Netflix television series, he is played by Aasif Mandvi.

Aunt Josephine thinks that grammar is the greatest joy in life. She keeps many books about Lake Lachrymose under her bed. These books include The Tides of Lake Lachrymose, The Bottom of Lake Lachrymose, Lachrymose Trout, The History of the Damocles Dock Region, Ivan Lachrymose - Lake Explorer, How Water Is Made and A Lachrymose Atlas. Ever since her husband Isaac (Ike for short) was devoured by Lachrymose Leeches, she has developed numerous fears, including irrational concerns about doorknobs, radiators, telephones, and ovens. In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, several events Josephine was irrationally afraid of occur when her home falls into the lake. For instance, a fridge nearly falls on Klaus and a radiator explodes.

In the end, Josephine pleads with Count Olaf (in his disguise of Captain Sham) to let her live by offering the Baudelaire children and their fortune in exchange for her own safety, but he pushes her overboard from a small sailboat after she corrected the grammar of her own death sentence, literally. It is heavily implied that she meets the same fate as her husband; she is surrounded by leeches and her tattered life jackets are found later by fishermen at the time the orphans were in Prufrock Preparatory School, two books later, but it is not conclusively established if she survived or not. The Grim Grotto implies that she might still be alive.[clarification needed] She is mentioned far more often than any other caregiver of the Baudelaire orphans after her death. She and Esmé Squalor are the only female guardians the Baudelaires have in the series.

In the film adaption, Aunt Josephine is played by Meryl Streep. In the 2017 Netflix television series, she is played by Alfre Woodard .